Originally posted by simpsonbo I would disagree that Kona is the prestiege event in triathlon. Maybe 14 years ago it was. The most recognizable names in the sport come the best at the Olympics now. How many Canadians can name off Peter Reid, Heather Fuhr, Lori Bowden or the Puntous twins as Canadians who have won at Kona. Simon Whitfield on the other hand is constantly year over year in the media.

Go to Kona and get back to me on which is the prestige event, check out the expo. All triathlon business plan their product unveils around Kona, media thrives on Kona, spectators go to Kona just for a vacation to watch the race. etc. ITU Grand Finale which had an awesome finish last year was hardly noticed by many. But I would say it might be different in Canada then the U.S. In the U.S. everyone knows who all the big Kona people are, few could name any ITU guys outside of the Brownlee's and Gomez.

Define "everyone". Ask someone down the street who is Andrew Starykowicz? Who is Craig Alexander even? Macca?

Now if by everyone you mean the average age grouper, then you probably are correct.

Part of it is def the WTC marketing with the Kona IM brand, but honestly as well, when you do a 5-6hr HIM or a 10-15hr IM, just saying you did that length race is a 'big deal' to most nonathletes.

Racing a sprint for an hour, or an Oly for 2:30-3hrs, while often even more agonizing in terms of pain intensity than the long stuff, just doesn't have that 'wow that's a crazy distance' sound that like it or not, a lot of AGers want when they say they're triathletes. It's simply too obscure to expect a nontriathlete to know the significance of a "2hr olympic distance triathlon", but any nonathlete knows that doing S/B/R for 14 hours sounds ridiculously hard (even though the 2hr Oly result is orders of magnitude superior.)

Until short-court racing is popular in the US and more well known in its own right, I don't think it's going to change.

Way off base if you ask me. On any given weekend count the number of people doing a sprint or Oly vs. the number of folks doing a long course race. It won't even be close in favor of short course. And to your other point.....a non-trithlete doesn't care one way or another, nor do they know the difference, or care.

The triathlon industry doesn't stay propped up by a few dozen long course races per year....not even close.

I'm currently a race director for a Kids Triathlon and we are not going with USAT sanctioning. More becasue we are looking at our race as an introduction to the sport so flotation devices are allowed and we will have people in the water assisting kids. The USAT race sanctioning process is very daunting for unpaid volunteer race director and in our case was not really worth it.

One positive though is that the USAT insurance we carry for our tri club would cover the event with a small added cost of maybe $50-100.

If our race is successful and we wish to bring the level of the race up, we may opt to do the USAT certiifciation of our race but that will require more cost for our participants and we are keeping our participant cost to $10. (try and beat that!!!)

Originally posted by simpsonbo I would disagree that Kona is the prestiege event in triathlon. Maybe 14 years ago it was. The most recognizable names in the sport come the best at the Olympics now. How many Canadians can name off Peter Reid, Heather Fuhr, Lori Bowden or the Puntous twins as Canadians who have won at Kona. Simon Whitfield on the other hand is constantly year over year in the media.

Go to Kona and get back to me on which is the prestige event, check out the expo. All triathlon business plan their product unveils around Kona, media thrives on Kona, spectators go to Kona just for a vacation to watch the race. etc. ITU Grand Finale which had an awesome finish last year was hardly noticed by many. But I would say it might be different in Canada then the U.S. In the U.S. everyone knows who all the big Kona people are, few could name any ITU guys outside of the Brownlee's and Gomez.

Define "everyone". Ask someone down the street who is Andrew Starykowicz? Who is Craig Alexander even? Macca?

Now if by everyone you mean the average age grouper, then you probably are correct.

I bet more people watch the Commonwealth games tri on tv/online than Kona.

Doubtful, again speaking from an American view. Every October all I see via social media is "Kona Parties" being posted. Went to Kona last year and the amount of people in Kona a week before was ridiculous.

Never seen any of that for the Commonwealth games. I know it is bigger in other parts of the world, but in the American corner Kona reigns supreme.

The BBC is having wall to wall coverage of Glasgow 2014... 6 am to 11.30 pm and Triathlon is on the first day. It will have more UK views than Kona gets.

Same for Spain. As a Spaniard living in the US, I know both ITU as well as WTC pros quite well. However, when I talk with my friends in Spain they are more knowledgeable of ITU than WTC and vice versa with my American friends. Obviously, Spain had lots of success at ITU for a long time (Ivan Raña and Gomez-Noya) as well as there are a good amount of great pros coming up that may take over the sport (ITU racing) in the near future.

I will say that ITU racing, Olympic Games, etc. are way more popular in Europe than Kona, and many people over there watch all these events live religiously.

Yep, triathlon is not big in Spain yet (people who compete/participate in triathlons). It grew exponentially during the past few years, but it is nothing compare to the US. However, ITU is "big" on TV and pros are know by "many" people. Please, don't get confused I used the words "big" and "many" to compare the popularity of the sport in Spain vs. the US by non-triathletes. Obviously, it is not soccer or basketball and it will never be, but I find that people there know about the sport, the pros, and the ITU circuit, even though they never did a triathlon in their life nor they don't have any interest in participating in any type of sport event.

You can ask who Javier Gomez Noya and lots of people know him. They even know the Brownlee's brothers!! And, of course, Ivan Raña and Mario Mola (there is a big discussion in some national newspapers about who's better: Mola or Gomez Noya)

From what I see, triathlon looks to be in good shape. I agree that there may be too many races, and perhaps some 'restructuring' should occur, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

As for USAT memberships, not sure that's a perfect measure. I only do 2-3 races per year and as a result, just pay the day license. It's cheaper that way. And I generally focus on long course race - last year just HIM, and this year one HIM and one IM. I guess I may be part of the problem that the OP raised, but oh well.